The present invention generally relates to an early detection of a contagious disease in farm animals. More specifically, the present invention relates to an early alert system and method for livestock disease detection using an radio frequency identification (RFID) reader and an RFID tag assigned to an animal.
Outbreak and control of contagious diseases and epidemics have become an important concern in modern livestock farming industry. As farmers attempt to improve yield and efficiency of their livestock farms within available spaces, animals are often placed in space-constrained livestock housing and are highly susceptible to a rapid contagion of dangerous epidemics. For example, avian influenza outbreaks in chicken farms, mad cow disease in cattle farms, and foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in various farm animals have become widespread, and early control of these outbreaks have become more difficult as high-efficiency livestock farming are likely causing even faster spread of the diseases among farm animals before any effective quarantine and treatment measures can take effect.
The conventional measure of detecting a disease in farm animals is generally slow and cumbersome. Farmers have to manually monitor conditions of each farm animals, typically contained in a livestock housing, and an animal suspected of being under the influence of a contagious disease is manually checked for its vital signs such as body temperature and heart rate. If this animal is confirmed to be infected of a dangerous or contagious disease, then it may be isolated from the flock for further treatment and handling. This conventional disease detection method is highly dependent on the level of experience and attention of a farmer monitoring the animals, thereby causing some serious medical conditions on a farm animal “slip through” the manual inspection process until the disease is further spread to other nearby animals. Furthermore, the process of checking the vital signs of an ill animal is a serialized, cumbersome, and slow process, and frequently causes delay in moving forward with quarantine, prevention, and/or treatment procedures of remaining animals.
Because any delay in quarantine, prevention, and treatment procedures during an outbreak of a contagious disease in a livestock farm can cause rapid infections to remaining animals, investment losses, and increased health risks to humans, it is highly desirable to devise an early alert system and a method for livestock disease detection. Furthermore, it may also be advantageous to utilize RFID tags attachable to animals for a systematic management of early detection of diseases for farm animals.